The Partner, our friend Missy, and I crammed into Missy’s car the Friday before Vic’s birthday and drove out to Penn State. Missy and I took turns driving and I was really hoping it would go a lot better than last time, but no, Ohio still sucks to drive through. As we didn’t arrive at their place until early Saturday morning, we all pretty much went to bed as soon as we got there.

Saturday morning proper we ate breakfast, drove around a bit, then headed out to the bars.

Here’s the thing about State College/Penn State: a lot of the bars won’t let you drink the day of your 21st birthday.

I’m sure you’re probably thinking, “What the fuck ever.” But I am not kidding. I thought Vic was kidding when she told me. I thought the bartender at the first bar we went in was kidding when he said they wouldn’t serve her shots, only beer. But then he took Vic’s driver’s license and wrote all her info down, then he got out a fat permanent marker and put big X’s on her hands so she would be forever marked as a Celebratory 21-year-old. I questioned his sincerity again and he told me again he could only serve us shots, and not her, because it was her 21st birthday. Then I told him his bar could fuck off, we’d go elsewhere, because we did not just drive nine fucking hours from Indiana to celebrate her 21st birthday without any fucking birthday shots. In Indiana, I said, we give FREE birthday shots.

But nearly every bar, bar and grill, and restaurant with a bar refused to serve Vic liquor. Some would only serve her if it’s been 26 hours since her birthday. Some places would serve her beer but not liquor. One bouncer wouldn’t even let us in, telling us, “We can’t do a 21 tonight. We can’t let you in.” And in the whole fucking city I couldn’t find one bar that would serve me two shots at one time.

State College bar owners, you suck.

Once we resigned ourselves to having to walk around searching for the bars that would serve us, the night went pretty well.

View the entire set here, or at Flickr: